James Hall is The Daily and Sunday Telegraph's retail editor.

Tesco boss's poetic take on shopping in the 1950s

Tesco gets a lot of stick. It is too big, too powerful and has bleached the rainbow of life in the UK, go the arguments. Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco's CEO, this morning described what a typical shopping trip was like 50 years ago. His prose is almost poetic. Give it a read. Do you think that what Tesco has done for UK consumers is really so bad?

"Shopping in the rain in markets, where stall holders, their hands wrapped in pairs of mittens, sold nothing exotic, no pineapples or melons – many people had not even seen such fruits – just huge mounds of cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, leeks, onions and, of course, mountains of potatoes.

Next stop was the grocers, where you had to queue twice, and pay twice, in order to buy a little tea and a few slices of ham.

After that, a walk through a department store – not to buy anything, but just to look at what you might buy if you could afford it – en route to a store to buy essentials. Poorly lit, bad displays, shoddy goods: this was the dismal lot, the typical shopping trip for many millions of people.

Shopping was not just inconvenient, it was frustrating: goods we look upon today as basics were luxuries, unaffordable for most people.

I am not suggesting that life today is perfect. Of course it isn’t. We will never live in a world where everyone can afford everything they want. But for millions of families, we have helped raise their standard of living. "